The primary purpose of the present experiment was to test whether the binaural equal-loudness-ratio hypothesis (i.e., the loudness ratio between monaural and binaural tones presented at the same Sound Pressure Level, SPL, is independent of SPL) holds for hearing-impaired listeners with bilaterally symmetrical hearing losses. The outcome of this experiment provided a theoretical construct for mo...

This thesis concerns a new zero-crossing-based binaural model for spatial hearing. Conventional binaural model computes cross-correlations of binaural signals for the estimation of the interaural time difference which is a primary spatial cue. However, the cross-correlationbased binaural processing model requires high computational complexity and suffers from inaccuracies in localizing sound so...

In recent years, it has been postulated that cigarette smoking can aggravate noise-induced hearing loss. In this study, we aimed to assess the effect of concurrent exposure to cigarette smoke and occupational noise on binaural hearing impairment (BHI). In an analytic study on the workers of a large wagon manufacturing company in 2007, 622 male workers (252 smokers and 370 non-smokers, matched f...

Binaural cues are required for localization of sound sources. In the present paper, representation of binaural cues has been investigated in the adult auditory cortex. Hearing and congenitally deaf cats were stimulated through binaural cochlear implants and unit responses were collected in the subregion of field A1 showing the largest amplitudes of evoked local field potentials. Sensitivity to ...

Six subjects who developed individually significant auditory deprivation effects associated with monaural amplification were tracked for 6.2 to 15.1 years from the time of their initial hearing aid fitting. Each subject received binaural hearing aids after the auditory deprivation effect became apparent and used binaural amplification for at least 4 years. The findings corroborate and expand up...

Binaural advantage was measured for 12 normally hearing subjects in a typical rectangular audiometric test room with a loudspeaker located in each corner. Four different loudspeaker configurations for presentation of signal and competition were evaluated. The results indicated that a configuration in which uncorrelated competition was delivered from both sides of the subject while the signal wa...

We study a system combining adaptive feedback cancellation and adaptive filtering connecting inputs from both ears for signal enhancement in hearing aids. For the first time, such a binaural system is analyzed in terms of system stability, convergence of the algorithms, and possible interaction effects. As major outcomes of this study, a new stability condition adapted to the considered binaura...

This report highlights research projects relevant to binaural and spatial hearing in adults and children. In the past decade we have made progress in understanding the impact of bilateral cochlear implants (BiCIs) on performance in adults and children. However, BiCI users typically do not perform as well as normal hearing (NH) listeners. In this article we describe the benefits from BiCIs compa...

For normal-hearing listeners, speech intelligibility improves if speech and noise are spatially separated. While this spatial release from masking has already been quantified in normal-hearing listeners in many studies, it is less clear how spatial release from masking changes in cochlear implant listeners with and without access to low-frequency acoustic hearing. Spatial release from masking d...

OBJECTIVES Many bilateral cochlear implant users show sensitivity to binaural information when stimulation is provided using a pair of synchronized electrodes. However, there is large variability in binaural sensitivity between and within participants across stimulation sites in the cochlea. It was hypothesized that within-participant variability in binaural sensitivity is in part affected by l...